


Even Odds

by scheherazade



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mob, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-16
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-19 15:26:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13707273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scheherazade/pseuds/scheherazade
Summary: Yanagi is the kind to play the odds; Niou would rather play the man. It makes for an interesting gamble, when both play it close to the chest.





	Even Odds

**Author's Note:**

> written for tenipuri shipname fest. prompt: ["gamble pair"](https://tenipurifests.dreamwidth.org/1320.html?thread=48168#cmt48168)

"Deal me in."

The card table in the back room is empty today, all except for the one guy who's always there. _The Master_ , to hear the romantics tell it. Probably because fully half of them are addled on the new neuro cigars—current street value: fifty cubits or half a month bondage, whichever can be paid up front—and maybe it's not too steep a price, considering, for a high strong enough to wash the gritty taste of life out of your system, but there are definitely easier ways to cheat death. 

Then again, if the romantics were half as smart as Niou, they wouldn't be romantics, now would they? They'd know better, and they'd also have dug far enough through the back alleys of the information black market to find out the man's real name: Yanagi. 

The man's expression doesn't change when Niou sits down, nor does he open the pack of cards lying on the table. He doesn't move at all. Niou smiles what he knows is an unpleasant smile. People who try to be opaque by giving nothing away are always at a disadvantage: the minute they make one wrong move, it's obvious as all hell. Better to be a constantly moving target, a fleck of debris in an infinite storm. 

He leans his elbow on the table, ready to repeat his demand. Yanagi says, "Buy in is ten thousand. The other tables up front begin at five hundred."

"Shame the other tables are all full," Niou declares in blatant contradiction to the half-empty state of the salon. He reaches for his inside breast pocket—keeps his movement slow and measured, when Yanagi's right shoulder tenses ever so slightly. Well, well, well.

The envelope, thick with bank notes, makes a satisfying thud on the table. 

Yanagi's hooded gaze flickers from Niou's grinning face to his ill-fitted suit. The vest doesn't match the tie. Their current positions hide his scuffed shoes from view, but even odds the man noticed that little detail when Niou first approached. Let him wonder, Niou laughs inwardly.

Yanagi takes the envelope and makes it disappear. Niou takes his stack of chips. 

He watches Yanag pick up the pack, peel away the shrink wrap, the crisp sound of new cardstock as he shuffles once, twice, thrice. Motions clean and practiced, good enough to attempt some sleight of hand, but Niou doubts he's the type to find satisfaction in rigging a game. It would defeat the satisfaction of calculating and playing the odds. 

Yanagi deals. Niou gathers his cards, taps the backs with a fingertip and—without looking at the face values—tosses two black chips into the pot. It earns him a blank look of obvious contempt.

"Go 'head," Niou drawls. "Ask."

"You presume that I have questions." Yanagi matches his wager and deals two more cards.

Niou gathers his hand, cards still facedown on the table, and raises again. "Tell me an answer, then, if questions aren't your thing." He can feel Yanagi's eyes on him as he reaches into his jacket pocket, this time removing a lighter and an unmarked box. "Ya mind?"

Yanagi inclines his head. Niou lights up. 

"So," Niou says after Yanagi has matched, dealt, and clearly waiting for him to fold, "Get a lot of customer complaints?"

Yanagi doesn't actually raise an eyebrow, but Niou wants to laugh anyway. He takes another drag on the yellow-banded blunt. 

Yanagi says, "And to which customers might you be referring?"

"Anyone besides me, 'course." There's something nice and dramatic about the way smoke edges his smile. "I'm just a loyal fan."

"My former colleagues share an evolving sense of loyalty, it appears."

Niou does laugh, this time. The man thinks he's working for Yukimura! Well, odds are good. Of all the big den lords still left, Yukimura _would_ be the one to send an expendable to fuck with competition. Though he doubts even Yukimura's willing to throw away the current detente—uneasy as it is, it's better than what came before. The last year-long war had halved the number of operational dens and obliterated Yanagi's longtime business partner, who, for all his analytical prowess, wasn't smart enough to stay out of Tezuka's feud with Atobe.

The gossip that went along with that particular piece of information is the reason Niou's here now. 

"Loyalty's only good if you're looking to get dead." Niou flips over his cards, lets out a low whistle at the hand he's landed. "I'll take it. What _you_ got over there, Yanagi?"

He looks up and finds himself grinning down the barrel of a gun. 

A heartbeat, two. When he counts to four, and his brains are still where they ought to be—inside his skull, not splattered across the wall—Niou lets his grin widen. 

"You always such a sore loser?"

"That is a question for you and your master. But it is your choice, so tell me: would you prefer a graceful exit, here and now, or would you prefer to take a message back to Sanada and chance his dubious mercies? You might tell him that his standards are slipping, if he's willing to set an addict to a task as reckless as yours."

"What, this?" Niou flicks a spot of ash from the slow-burning cigar. "Told you, I'm just a fan. I don't do addiction or romance. Really, I'm a tough demographic to crack. Congrats on cracking me."

Yanagi doesn't reply. He also doesn't lower the gun. Niou sighs.

"All right, look." He slowly rolls the cigar between his fingers until the insignia stamped on the thing is, finally, visible to Yanagi. "It's the real thing, yeah? Bought from the source and everything. Not my fault you and Sanada like using the same colors on everything. Speaking of, you ever thought about blue?"

The gun remains pointed at his head. Niou raises one eyebrow. 

Yanagi says, "Strip."

The other eyebrow follows the first. "You wanna come over here and do it yourself, or do I have your permission to move my hands?"

"Slowly. Jacket first."

Niou pretends to think about it for a second. Then—slowly, as instructed—he sits up and divests himself, first, of the cigar. 

Yanagi doesn't return his grin. Niou didn't expect him to.

Moving just as carefully, he frees one arm from the suit jacket, then the next, keeping both hands in sight at all times. He lets the jacket dangle for a moment, suspended above the table, before dropping it.

The vest follows the jacket. The tie follows the vest. The shirt goes last, button by button, threadbare and white and Yanagi must have noticed that Niou isn't wearing an undershirt. Any ink on his skin would, by now, be visible through the thin cotton. 

Niou locks eyes with the man holding his life in his hands, and shrugs off his shirt.

He quashes the urge to make some throwaway comment. _LIke what you see?_ The way Yanagi looks him over is clinical, cataloguing every muscle and scar. Maybe Niou imagines it, the way Yanagi lingers on his nipple ring. The silver piercing goes hot and cold, or maybe he does. The way blood rushes south is anything but imaginary.

Yanagi says, "Stand up."

Niou barks a laugh. The bastard. The table is low enough to offer nothing in the way of concealment, once he's on his feet.

Yanagi says, "Close the door."

"Doesn't lock," Niou notes after he's done so. He keeps his back turned, inviting—not begging, no; never again—but invitations can still be important to this kind of thing. "Whaddya want me to do, boss? Hang a sock?"

"I want," Yanagi says, close enough to make Niou start half a step back, "you to tell me your name."

The gun is nowhere in sight. He feels vaguely cheated—until Yanagi takes one measured step—two, three—Niou instinctively moves to stay just out of touching distance—and then the sharp edge of the card table is digging into Niou's hip.

Yanagi takes one last, tiny step—and stops. Niou swears, bracing both hands behind himself. The imagined press of his body is ten times worse than the real thing, and judging by the look on Yanagi's face, none of this was unintentional.

"Your name," Yanagi says, in the tone of a man who's holding all the cards.

His opponent folds. "Niou. But you can call me whatever you like."


End file.
